Are You Ready for This?: Home & Garden Books 2018

By Lela Nargi
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Feb 09, 2018

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The stereotypical image of a survivalist—a grizzled type who stockpiles canned goods and weapons in a home-built bomb shelter in advance of the apocalypse—has gone the way of the classroom duck-and-cover drill. Meet the modern-day prepper, who is gaining ground in a less-secluded corner of the home and garden category, where sustainability meshes with back-to-the-land homesteading skills, a family-centric DIY ethos, and emergency preparedness.

Publishers with prepping books on their spring and fall lists foresee an interest in such titles among a growing readership, one that is looking for a measure of control in uncertain political and environmental times. The titles address “fears that people have,” says Abigail Gehring at Skyhorse. “They’re a bit apocalyptic, but practical.”

The tone taken in these books runs the gamut from the merely industrious to the apocalyptic: At one end are the books that offer what Storey’s Deborah Balmuth calls “ simple steps you can take to be self-sufficient,” and at the other are the books that tackle topics such as one mentioned by Bryce Willet, executive v-p at Ulysses Press—if “every urban center has 72 hours’ worth of food, here’s what to do on day four.”

Here, our somewhat unscientific panic-o-meter ranks forthcoming books in accordance with the level of alarm they sound about the state of the world.

1. Prep-CuriousPrepping 101: 40 Steps You Can Take to Be PreparedKathy Harrison. Storey, June

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